Christopher de Leon Praying for Oscar Success of 'Slumdog Millionaire'

The early word is that Slumdog Millionaire will not be showing in Philippine cinemas, so its cultural impact here may be minimal, even if it wins the Best Picture Oscar. I've yet to see the film, but I do know that its framing device is the once popular game show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire (now defunct in the Philippines). 

It would have been nice if Slumdog became a box-office hit in the Philippines and swayed television executives to revive Who Wants... Trivia contests are among the few activities I have some skill in. The premiere of Who Wants... back in the early noughts led me to reasonable fantasies for such prized luxuries as a Playstation 2, a 32" television with Picture-in-Picture, and a DVD player. I honed my thumb-mashing skills for the Fastest Finger First preliminaries. I practiced enunciating words which I was visually familiar with but never had any context to appropriately use in conversation (e.g., Tegucigalpa). I had verbally contracted with my lifelines. I contemplated shaving my head for my appearance on the then-functional IBC 13. 

Obviously, I never got on the show. I stopped counting the number of times I filled the coffers of the show's producers by dialling the non-toll free number, and answering correctly the questions for the preliminary qualifier. My calendar was dotted with times of days that had been reserved for my studio appearance just in case. After my first dozen or so calls resulted in nothing, I reasoned that I was being ignored because I was calling through my SMART line, Globe being the official sponsor of Who Wants... So for the next two dozen or so calls, I would walk 2/3rds of a kilometer to a desolate Globe pay phone, slowly reciting my name and circumstances as the chill of dusk started to descend. After a few months, I had to start focusing for my bar review so I called only about three times more before convincing myself I could earn that one million through hard work as a lawyer. I was wrong. 

Serious Pinoy trivia buffs -- the sort who do not want to degrade themselves in public by having to do the papaya dance or shout inane slogans with fists clenched in the air -- should have a rooting interest in Slumdog as a possible gateway for the return of relatively sober quiz shows in the Philippines.